


Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

by onedogtown



Category: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Genre: 1960s, Character Study, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:39:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/pseuds/onedogtown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another old song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [omphale23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/gifts).



Basket houses in the Village tended to open and close on a monthly basis. Pappi, while an asshole, had been right about one thing— that it was not a business to get into if you seriously wanted to make money. This place had opened up a few weeks earlier, although that wasn’t immediately obvious; it was dark, cramped, smoky, and in all ways not noticeably different than any of its competitors. If Llewyn hadn't been told that it was new, he probably would have assumed that he had been playing there for years.

Jim had been the one, again, to give him the tip that the owner was looking for people to play on a specific night. There was some kind of party happening. When Llewyn got off the stage, the table that the others were at was so crowded that he had to pull a chair over.

"That was great," Jim said. His buddies nodded along to what he said, looking serious. Llewyn leaned back in his chair and reached out for one of the half-filled beer bottles on the table. When no one said anything, he picked it up and drank.

"Thank you," he said, trying to hide how he felt about the whole situation. Jim smiled and nodded at him benevolently in response.

The unofficial point of the gathering was something about self-improvement. One of the kids Jim and Jean were friends with had a record coming out, and this was a little bit of a party, albeit one that some of the guests were being paid to perform at. There were about nine of them— minus Jean, who had gotten up and headed in what Llewyn assumed was the direction of the bathroom when the applause died out and he started to pack up his guitar and head towards her— and all of them absolutely of a type, nervous, condescending, and self-conscious about dressing like their parents hadn’t paid for the college degrees they hadn’t finished as a political statement.

One of them said to Llewyn, "You have an interesting stage presence. Very unique, very solitary," and Llewyn, who was halfway through the beer and didn’t really have much of a handle on conversation at the best of times, said without thinking, "I used to--" and then realized what he had been about to say and trailed off. 

"Really did a number on you, huh?" one of the younger-looking guys filled in sympathetically. Llewyn stared at him, feeling a few steps behind.

"You could say that," he said, which usually worked as an answer. His tone seemed to impress most of the others, whose most intimate relationship up to that point was with their guitars. He didn’t think much about it, since at the same moment Jean returned to the table. He didn’t say anything to her, since she had the same placid, fake expression that she always seemed to have around Jim and his friends, but she met Llewyn’s eyes when he looked at her for too long without realizing it. It was more of acknowledgement than he’d been expecting. They hadn’t spoken in a few weeks, in what Llewyn liked to think of as a mutual, tacit agreement, but which probably wasn’t. Probably he should feel lucky that she hadn’t packed up and headed to Akron at this point.

The conversation went on around him. Some of the people there gave Llewyn respectful nods, as if he had really proved himself that night. Llewyn nodded back, swallowing the beer along with his own annoyance. The room was too hot and too packed— although, what else was new— and he felt on-edge and defensive. He tried to focus on the wispy version of “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone” that was coming from the stage, and just ended up feeling more of an urge to leave.

“Llewyn!” someone said. It was Jim. Llewyn pasted on a smile that probably didn’t look any better than it felt. 

Jim's purpose in inviting him was that wanted Llewyn to meet a friend of his. He acted as though all of this was a normal part of socializing, but he had already outlined over the phone that this was in fact carefully planned. The guy was named Terry— information Llewyn pretended to be hearing for the first time— and he had red hair in a ponytail and a brightly stupid expression. He also, according to Jim, had a loft apartment that his parents paid for and a hunger for authentic living. Llewyn was supposed to be seducing him for permanent occupancy of that apartment, which was a less appealing prospect than Jim seemed to think that it was. He'd accepted the set-up because of the money he'd get from the gig, and now he had to stick around afterwards.

“Llewyn,” Terry said. “Great name. Where’d you pick that up?”

“Uh, my great-grandfather,” Llewyn said. “My mom liked it, so she talked my dad into using it for me.” 

Terry nodded, with an expression of deep understanding on his face.

“It’s great,” Jim said, mysteriously. Llewyn decided to make this the end of the conversation.

“I’m gonna—“ he said, gesturing. Jim and Terry both nodded at him, conveying approval. he tried not to imagine that Jean was looking at him while he made his escape.

The bathrooms were in the back of the place, through a rickety wooden hallway that was lined with signed pictures of performers that looked old and battered enough to have been left over from the previous owners— no actually well-known performers, just dumb kids who thought that it would give their careers a boost. He didn’t look at them, not that anybody ever did. There was a janitor pushing a mop, stolidly ignoring the hum of noise and energy just beyond the club door; maybe, Llewyn thought, it was easier if you’d never been out there in the first place. 

The janitor had started in the bathroom and worked his way outside, Llewyn could see when he went in. That was a really good thing. He’d been in enough club bathrooms to be grateful for that. The place was still covered in graffiti, scrawled or carved in, which no one seemed to care enough about to remove. He read the sides of the stall absentmindedly— names, a few linked couples, several hundred band names, some insults, FOR A GOOD TIME CALL X, some pretentious extracts from The Wasteland, song lyrics, one oddly insistent FRODO LIVES! Everyone thought that they were the originals, despite all evidence in front of them. His head was starting to clear a little. He got up, washed his hands, and peered into the mirror, trying to see if he looked right. There was less stuff written on the outside of the stall, probably because you had less of a cover, or maybe people just wanted to deface public property less after they were finished doing their business. Llewyn was barely paying attention to what was written there, just glancing at it, which was why he almost missed Timlin + Davis ’59 carved into the bottom of the wooden board.

He looked at it.

Then he went out of the bathroom and found the janitor, who had worked his way maybe a foot down the hallway. “Hey,” Llewyn said. “Sorry, can I ask you— do you know the last people who owned the club, around—“

“I just started working here,” the janitor said.

“No, okay, but— did this place used to be The Good Night?” Llewyn asked urgently.

“It’s called The Last Dance now, buddy,” said the janitor, as if that was an answer to the question he’d been asked. “Says so on the sign outside.”

“I came in through the fucking front door, of course I saw the fucking sign,” Llewyn said. “Did it use to be— you know what, never mind, I already know you’re not going to say anything useful.”

“I just started working here a month ago,” the guy said apologetically, as if the place only started handing out brains to its employees as a favor after they’d been working a month and a half.

He didn’t really need to be told an answer, anyway. Timlin & Davis had never really had fans who were enthusiastic enough to carve their names into the bathrooms of clubs they’d never even played at, and anyway, he’d recognized the place without knowing as soon as he’d walked in. The Good Night must have closed down a month before Timlin & Davis had stopped playing together for good— it was coming back to him now; something about a faulty liquor license— and it hadn’t been sold until a few weeks before this night. Llewyn had made it into a private, pointed gesture after Mike died, to keep going to most of the places they’d been together. He hadn’t really understood why, at the time, but now, feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach— yeah, he got it.

Llewyn didn’t go back in to look at the graffiti. He was pretty sure that it was Mike’s— Llewyn would probably have gone for Davis & Timlin, just out of stubbornness, and anyway Mike was the one who owned a penknife and carried it around with him, like some kind of fucking Eagle scout.

He did end up pausing at the end of the hall to look through the photographs, the older ones at the hall’s beginning. Most of them looked pretty similar to each other, no matter whether it was a girl or a guy or however many people, just because all of them had the same expression. He and Mike were exactly the same as everyone else who put their pictures up next to the bathrooms of a second-rate basket house for luck. Llewyn wondered how many of the others had ended up getting a recording contract, and how many of them it had ended up mattering to. He left their photo up with the rest.

Back in the actual club, the man onstage was still working his way through “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone”, which meant either that the whole incident had taken less than two minutes or the singer was really dragging it out. Llewyn leaned against the doorway, looking at the people who were in the audience. He could see Jean, listening to the music and leaning towards Jim, and Terry across the table from them, looking incredibly punchable. He thought that there wasn't much chance that he'd be able to ingratiate himself enough to get a couch. Then he wondered if there was any point in going back out at all. He was thinking about Mike, but it wasn't as if he had forgotten about him at any other time. It was impossible, living in the same part of the city, with the same job, going to the same places and talking to the same people. Someday, someone would have the bright idea to sand down the bathrooms and throw away the fading photographs in the hallway, and Al Cody would stop keeping box after box of his own records, much less one that a stranger had dumped on him, and Jean would care less and less, and the Gorfeins would start winnowing down their collection to the essentials, and Llewyn would still be in the same place. Most of the time, Mike still felt more real to him than any of the people he talked to. He wasn't sure if he ever wanted that to not be true. Llewyn stood there without moving a step in either direction, watching everyone else listen to the music, and thought about that.


End file.
